It's got to be the price of hard drives. They're way up, due to supply issues in Thailand, and the DCX3200 is still $142, which is basically the DCX3400 without a hard drive.
This would also explain the price increase in portals; the lower supply of hard drives would increase the price of gateways, resulting in fewer gateway purchases, which in turn lowers the demand for additional portals, causing the price of portals to increase.
I notice London Drugs website last night (2/3) still had the DCX3400 listed for $179. but this morning it's now $348, just like BB and FS which went up in price the other day. what a price jump! oh well...
is this a conspiracy to get everyone to buy a Gateway system? or merely a consequence of the HDD shortage, as tux suggests
I'm on a Mac and prices have remained steady. Anyone know if have PC prices gone up 43%?
348 x 43% = 149.64
Just to point out the flawed logic of the increase of HD prices being the behind the increase of the cost of the Gateway. Bottom line is Shaw is in the business of making money and they were probably losing money at $348 let alone the secret sale price. They were probably hoping for more people to jump on the Gateway bandwagon, and that probably didn't happen.
I also think that the price increase has nothing to do with the hard disk price. Shaw lowered the Gateway system price to get more people to switch. I am one of those who pull the trigger during the secret sale.
Shaw may be happy with the subscribers base and remove the discount.
Wow, I didn't realize the $179 was a temporary sale price. I'm glad I bought our box when I did. I bought one 2 weekends ago and had thought of buying a 2nd for when we upgrade our 2nd tv but didn't do that and instead decided to wait and spend the money later. Maybe I should have gotten the 2nd one at the same time. At least we were able to get one of them at that price and maybe they will drop in price sometime again by the time we are ready to upgrade our tv.
That's because it wasn't a sale price. I was telemarketing for Shaw when they lowered the price on Sept 1, and when they dropped the price, it wasn't a sale, it was a price drop. The $50 PVR expander last summer was a sale, the PVR price drop wasn't.
Can't say for the Gateway but yeah, the sudden price increase of the DCX3400 back to $348 seems very odd.
When the DCX3400 price dropped to ~$198 last Sept, I think it had already been out on the market for about a year at ~$350. At the time there was no indication that this was a special limited-time "sale price". From the outside, it had all the looks of a drop in the regular street price at all retailers - a price that persisted for 5 months, aside from the occasional actual sale of $179 or less. You naturally expect consumer electronics products to go down in price over time, as products mature or if the company starts offering newer fancier models (Gateway), or if there's competition (Telus Optik PVR is $250, btw)
But these boxes aren't really standalone consumer devices - they're really just enablers for customers to use Shaw's services (and give them a monthly revenue stream). You would think it's in Shaw's best interest to make it as painless as possible to buy a box and then sign up for or add to their monthly service? I'm guessing that a 75% increase in hardware price doesn't achieve that... Strange too, because at the same time Shaw is trying to get everyone to migrate to digital.
Maybe internally at Shaw it was secretly always a limited-time sale price at $198, but it sure didn't look like it for 5 months.
What could be the reason for such a big price increase?... Gained too many new digital subscribers from Telus after the price drop? Losing too much subsidizing the hardware? (surely, the average customer's monthly TV bill is high enough to recover that in short time?) Sudden price increase by Motorola? Supply constraint? Shareholders angry at latest quarterly results? Greed? ...
Even the greedy cellphone companies don't jack up the price of old hardware like that.
London Drugs is selling the MCX3400 for $198 starting tomorrow until Feb 29th. Their flyer is on today's Calgary Herald. The online flyer will be updated tomorrow.
Went to Best Buy to buy the following and got it for the following:
Gateway $194.59 (PM with 10% of difference)
3 Portals $138.39 X 3 = 415.17 (PM with 10% of difference)
Total = 609.76 plus 12% tax = $682.93
But when I went to the till it said "PROMO $150 GIFT CARD" so they gave me a $150 best buy gift card for next time I shop there.... (which is probably why they did not lower the prices for this sale) So I got it for $682.93 and I have $150 to spend next time I go.
Also called shaw and swapping 3 old PVRs for additional portals, and now I have gateway + 6 portals for $682.93 (532.93 if you count the giftcard) which I think was a good deal.
No Best Buy had a promo that if you bought the gateway and portal you got $150 gift card (which is the price difference) but because they could not override it in their system (since they were price matching) they gave it to me anyways.
I just got back from Best Buy and can confirm that you can get the $150 gift card even with a price match. I bought the Shaw Gateway and one Portal, had it price matched to Visions sale and got the $150 gift card with it. Now that is a good deal in my eyes.
It's not 'old' but it isn't the latest and 'greatest'. That title falls on the Gateway right now but since it is really a different system, it isn't in the same category.
The 3400 is the most recent model of Motorola STB/PVR that Shaw offers. It has been out for a couple of years now. The price you mention is not bad. I last bought one for $99 during the New Year's 'Secret Sale' but that was an exceptionally good deal for only 2 days.
If you read through the entire '3400 Owner's' thread that DSgamby posted the link to, you should find answers to any questions you might have.
DCT2524's not HD, and not a PVR. It's just a [very old] SD cable box. I haven't heard of any changes to the trade-in program, so you should probably be able to get one additional portal by trading in your DCT6416.
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